The Future of Velocity: Is the Czinger 21C VMax Simply Too Much?
For years, the automotive industry has buzzed about Czinger. The Southern California-based company, founded by Kevin and Lukas Czinger, has been pioneering a new era of hypercars, blending avant-garde design with cutting-edge technology. We had the chance to interview the father-son duo on The InEVitable podcast back in 2022, and the conversation left us both intrigued and slightly overwhelmed. Now, as part of the inaugural Velocity Tour—a 500-mile road rally through California wine country—I finally had the opportunity to get behind the yoke-shaped steering wheel of the 21C VMax. While the 21C is designed for the track, the VMax is engineered for the open road. This is the first time a non-Czinger employee has been allowed to drive a VMax in a real-world scenario, and what I experienced was nothing short of astonishing. It’s a car that defies categorization, a true hypercar that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible.
Factory Fresh: A Peek Inside the Future of Manufacturing
My journey began not at a scenic overlook or a secluded canyon road, but at the headquarters of Czinger’s parent company, Divergent Technologies. To enter the facility, I had to present my U.S. passport. This isn’t a typical car factory, and Divergent is no ordinary supplier. The company uses iterative artificial intelligence and large-scale 3D printers to design and manufacture incredibly lightweight and strong mechanical components. In fact, Divergent serves as a supplier to the U.S. Department of Defense. While the military hardware was covered during my visit, a glimpse inside one of their massive printers was like looking into the future. More than a dozen lasers were zapping powdered aluminum into automotive parts that resembled bird bones.
Lukas Czinger, the young CEO of both companies, explained that Divergent’s technology has reached what he calls the “Pareto optimal,” the point where adding or subtracting a single gram of material becomes detrimental to the design. For example, an engineer might request a part to hold the remote reservoir for a car’s rear suspension. Using the available space and the required strength specifications, the software iterates through hundreds of thousands of designs, seeking the strongest and lightest configuration. It’s like the evolutionary process accelerated to warp speed.
In addition to their defense work, nine automotive OEMs utilize Divergent’s 3D-printed components. Aston Martin, Bugatti, and McLaren publicly admit to using the technology, while the Ferrari F80 has control arms that certainly look like they could be 3D-printed.
Under the Carbon Fiber: A Hybrid Powerhouse
Czinger produces two versions of what is essentially the same car. The 21C (named after the 21st century) is the high-downforce track monster, while the VMax is the wingless, long-tailed version designed for the road. For the Velocity Tour, I was piloting a silver VMax.
I say “piloting” deliberately because the cabin feels more like a jet fighter canopy than a typical car interior. Czinger claims it’s like being in a fighter jet, and having had the opportunity to ride in an Extra 330LT stunt plane, I can attest to the similarity. There’s glass less than a foot away from both sides of your head, providing excellent visibility. However, getting in and out of the car is a bit of a challenge. You have to sit with your legs facing out on the massive sill, pull your knees up, and then rotate on your butt as you tuck your feet into the footwell before sliding your head under the roof.
One reason for the massive sills is the battery packs. The 21C VMax is a hybrid hypercar, with each sill containing 2.2-kWh of battery power, totaling 4.4-kWh. The car is not a plug-in hybrid; a motor powered by the mid-mounted V-8 engine keeps the battery charged. These batteries can deliver 500 horsepower to the front axle, which has one motor per wheel. The combustion engine is a Czinger-designed 2.9-liter twin-turbo V-8 rated at 750 hp on California’s 91-octane premium unleaded gasoline. When running on 100-octane race fuel, the horsepower increases to 850. The small but mighty engine can also run on ethanol, offering even more power, though Czinger has not released those figures. We estimate a 10 percent increase.
The gas engine powers the rear wheels through an Xtrac seven-speed, single-clutch automated semi-sequential transmission. This is similar to the Xtrac gearbox used in Pagani’s Utopia, but Czinger not only 3D-prints the transmission case but also uses small 48-volt electric motors to execute faster shifts at lower speeds. This eliminates the drunken, surging feeling common to other automated single-clutch gearboxes at low speeds. The twin-barrel actuators work as advertised in low-speed situations, a fact I was grateful to discover. Navigating into gas stations, restaurants, and hotel parking lots felt almost normal. Seriously, bravo.
Track Time: A Ride to Remember
One element that never felt normal was the presence of a professional driver, Evan Jacobs, sitting behind me for the entire day. As is typical with some high-end hypercars like Bugatti and Pagani, Czinger had Jacobs in the car to ensure I didn’t drive the $2.5 million vehicle off a cliff. Thankfully, Jacobs later assured the Czinger team that I was not a threat to the car and was allowed to drive solo for the rest of the rally.
We stopped by Laguna Seca for some parade laps, but non-Czinger employees are not allowed to drive the VMax on racetracks, even at the incredibly slow pace required for rally participants. As I’ve learned the hard way, even if you can’t drive, riding shotgun is always an option. I scrambled into the bizarre rear seat, and the first thing to note is that if you have large calves or feet, the rear-seat experience isn’t great. My XXL calves were literally wedged between the carbon-fiber tub and the carbon-fiber seat, and my feet didn’t fit well either.
However, the visibility through the side glass is incredible. Again, it reminded me of a stunt plane and was a uniquely novel way to experience riding around a track—something I’ve done more than 1,000 times in my career. This was especially true when Jacobs and I convinced the Skip Barber Racing School staff (whose track day we crashed) to let him take the VMax for a couple of “6/10ths” hot laps. The most impressive hot lap I’ve ever experienced was riding shotgun in an Aston Martin Valkyrie LMH race car, during which I could feel the blood pooling in my extremities under braking. The Czinger VMax is now a very close second.
Remember, Jacobs wasn’t pushing the car to its limits. Even at something less than the limit and without the big-downforce rear wing, it was easy to understand how the Czinger 21C achieved what the brand calls the California Gold Rush. This means it set five production car track records at Thunder Hill, Sonoma Raceway, Laguna Seca, Willow Springs, and the Thermal Club in just five days, driving from each track to the next. Later, Czinger returned to Laguna Seca to not only beat its own record but to reclaim the throne from a track-special Koenigsegg Jesko Sadair’s Spear. That lap time—a ridiculous 1 minute, 22.30 seconds—is quicker than the fastest MotoAmerica Superbike lap ever recorded at Laguna, a 1:22.56.
Czinger claims a vehicle weight of approximately 3,600 pounds, which is quite light for a 1,250-hp hybrid vehicle. To provide some context, the Ferrari SF90 Stradale Asseto Fiorano—the highest-performance version of a three-motor, twin-turbo V-8 PHEV that only produces 986 hp—weighs 3,839 pounds. The new Lamborghini Temerario is another three-motor, twin-turbo V-8 (that again makes less power, but you get the comparison) that weighs in at a rather hefty 4,185 pounds.
Now’s a good time to mention that the SF90 and the Temerario are the two quickest accelerating gasoline-powered cars MotorTrend has ever tested (the Ferrari for 0–60 mph and the Lambo for the quarter mile). If Czinger’s weight claim proves to be true, the unorthodox Southern California startup has managed to beat two Italian legends with its first product. That’s remarkable on its own, especially considering that while Southern California is known for many things, there isn’t a huge pool of supercar-building expertise to draw from. In other words, L.A. is not exactly Modena.
On the Road: A Drive Through the Wine Country
The route chosen for the rally consisted mostly of true back roads. Tight, winding, lousy, weather-beaten pavement—not the type of asphalt that hypercar dream trips are made of. Plus, there was a lot of following the pack, navigating to lunch and coffee stops, and hanging with the camera car. I was perhaps a bit disappointed at the time, but in retrospect, what I got out of the experience is something akin to what most owners
